


Ephemeral Creatures

by Unreal_Kitty



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Reflection, somewhere between poetry and prose, thomas says goodbye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unreal_Kitty/pseuds/Unreal_Kitty
Summary: "Butterflies are brief," reflects the shade that once was Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet. But then again, so are moths. And there is power in metamorphosis, if one dares to find it.
Relationships: Edith Cushing/Thomas Sharpe
Kudos: 12





	Ephemeral Creatures

She was a butterfly.   
Brilliant. Graceful.   
She brought color to every dark room. She was sunlight on the wing.   
Edith.   
So thirsty, alighting on books and daintily draining them dry. The heaviest tome was a rose petal in her hands.   
How could I help but reach for her? For Edith, Edith of the golden wings? Golden wings and golden laughter, even golden hair, of all things! She was a fairytale. She was the Beauty, walking through a decaying castle, frozen in time.   
And I, so beastly and pale, a young lord trapped, a man accursed.   
Thank God she escaped, my Edith, my Lady Butterfly. Thank God she escaped by net. 

My sister never cared much for butterflies. She thought them weak and fragile things, ephemeral creatures.   
Of course she would. She didn’t understand the power of transformation. My sister’s tragedy. She clung to her crumbling chrysalis and called it strength.   
But strength is moving forward.   
Metamorphosis.   
Strength is the dying and changing and _leaving_. Leaving all that you know, all that you were, to chase that sunlight glimmer peaking through a crack in the wall. 

Edith was a butterfly, brave and beautiful, and the strongest of us all.   
She was a butterfly. Flitting into my world, with her golden wings and golden smile.   
Where she landed, glowing like a sun in miniature, cobwebs burned away. Fear burned away.   
The horrors, for a moment, the horrors burned away. 

But butterflies are brief, like a smile in winter.   
They do not stay for long. Thank God she did not stay, where so tempted, I could have drowned her, bound her. Preserved her shape in crimson clay.   
But she was a butterfly, with agile wings to fly away. 

Edith, my love, if only I could go with you. Take to the skies and cross the ocean.   
Return with you to that vital land from whence you came.   
But I’m a moth, my dear, of darker lands, doomed to seek the light and burn away.   
We, too, are ephemeral creatures.


End file.
